This study explores the operational challenges of emerging fashion designers in South Korea through in-depth interviews. The findings reveal significant challenges across key components of brand operation: product and image development, production, sales, promotion, and finance. Designers sought to express original narratives through their collections each season but encounter significant obstacles, such as limited production capacity, lack of marketing resources, and financial instability. Small order volumes hinder securing manufacturers, forcing designers to reinvest most revenue into sample development, with little left for labor or growth. Based on these insights, the study proposes three strategies to strengthen designer brand growth. First, it is necessary to ensure the efficient operation of numerous institutions and associations in Korea through systematic and continuous support at each stage of their programs. Each institution and association should independently run their own separate support programs to improve their expertise, optimizing the government’s limited budget. Second, adopting an agency model for emerging fashion designers, similar to entertainment agencies, can be effective. In this model, agency-affiliated celebrities act as muses for clothing lines and merchandise, enhancing sales via strategic promotion and marketing while encouraging mutual growth through revenue sharing. Third, the Korean fashion designer industry’s distribution structure needs reform.

This study aims to identify the diverse types and characteristics of signatures that appear in contemporary fashion while primarily brand focusing on emerging Korean designer brands. To this end, qualitative content analysis using news articles and in-depth interviews with 15 emerging Korean designers were conducted. The news article analysis revealed six types of signatures: design based on formative sensibility expression, strategically constructed designer/brand identity, brand practices carried by cultural and spatial experiences, craftsmanship and custom production, contemporary reinterpretation of traditional designs, and text-based visual symbolic systems. The result of the in-depth interviews identified five types of signatures among emerging Korean designer brands: design expressions evolving from designer and brand identity, production emphasizing practicality and craftmanship, brand experiences based on spaces, visual narrative symbolism, and limited-edition items. Unlike established fashion brands that focus on fixed visual or textual elements through strategic planning by the established fashion brands, emerging Korean designer brands gradually and dynamically develop signatures which are grounded in personal philosophy, ethical values, and ongoing interaction with consumers. The findings of this study imply that the signatures of emerging Korean designer brands are not merely aesthetic repetitions, but are instead representations of evolving and situated expressions that interacts with and responds to socio-cultural changes and contexts.